Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

What surprises me is how undiscussed the actual underlying issues are.

Cultural stability and assimilation rate are real processes, that can be influenced by various policies.

Similar, economies run on labor and skill, and growth or shrinking of a labor pool has serious ramifications.

Yet these things aren't part of most of these discussions: instead it's sound bites and hyping extreme scenarios (on all sides) as common occurrences.

--

In most countries with low birth rates, it would be extremely beneficial to everyone there to boost population growth through immigration.

Yet immigration and assimilation create cultural friction with the then-dominant national culture, so that needs to be managed.

Ultimately, I'd like to see more honest communication around "We're encouraging immigration to drive our economy" and "Here are the things that immigrants are having to deal with, as they adjust to living in our country, and what you can do to help them."

It sucks when someone is outcompeted by immigrant labor, but that should probably prompt some self reflection -- how can someone new to a country substitute into their job? And why weren't they doing more to find a job where that wasn't possible?




> We're encouraging immigration to drive our economy

But this is an official communication in Europe - we need the numbers to grow. Rapes, shootings and bombings are a small price to pay for ever-increasing GDP and next bonus for CEOs.

> It sucks when someone is outcompeted by immigrant labor, but that should probably prompt some self reflection -- how can someone new to a country substitute into their job?

By being cheaper and agreeing on worse working conditions. Privatizing profits and socializing losses. Liberal credo.


> for ever-increasing GDP and next bonus for CEOs.

Or healthcare and social systems not collapsing in a few decades? Europeans have three options: start having more children, start working well into your 70s or accept a lot of immigrants (who are consequently are also likely to have much more children due to their cultural & religious “values”).

The last one seems like the easiest option if you are a politician/voter in your 50s-60s+ since you won’t live long enough to see all of the outfall.


I agree and disagree with specific points in your reply.

Yes, Europeans should start having more children if they want to keep their way of living. But no, immigrants will not save demography, as data shows that migrants tend to have less and less children in subsequent generations (ignoring the fact that fertility rate is falling everywhere around the world, even in poorer countries). It is not a panacea, it is not even a palliative. Nobody can point to any country in Europe and say that mass immigration changed it for the better (some limited immigration may be beneficial, though). And this was my point - immigration benefits mostly those that own factories, capital etc.

You are right in your last sentence - gerontocracy is taking a future from their children. Everywhere.


> But no, immigrants will not save demography

I didn’t say that immigration is a longterm solution. It might delay the collapse of social security, healthcare etc. systems which is the main thing that matters to the people who hold the majority of political power in Europe (those in their late 50s and > 60). Expecting them to willfully sacrifice their personal wellbeing for a more sustainable longterm solution wouldn’t make a lot of sense. So we are pretty stuck…

> as data shows that migrants tend to have less and less children in subsequent generations

Depends. If they don’t assimilate and don’t abandon their religious and cultural practices that might not happen. e.g. the Haredi in Israel (not exactly immigrants in the same way but an example of how very high birth rates can be maintained. Unfortunately this type people are extremely unproductive economically and hold extreme political views..)

> And this was my point - immigration benefits mostly those that own factories, capital etc.

I don’t fully agree. From the economic perspective at least. Having a higher proportion of young/working age, productive adults in the population benefits everyone short to medium term.

US handled this specific problem much better than Europe overall though. First of all they managed to attract the most capable and productive emigrants (Europe is rarely the first option) and have done a much better job at assimilating them.

Consequently US is in a much better position demographically compared to Europe, China and the rest of the developed world.


>economies run on labor and skill, and growth or shrinking of a labor pool has serious ramifications. [...] In most countries with low birth rates, it would be extremely beneficial to everyone there to boost population growth through immigration.

It is possible to make the argument that negative birth rates are either (1) a result of overpopulation correcting itself or (2) a result of social problems relating to factors like marriage and career goals. I would consider (1) to be a strong form of this argument and (2) to be a weak form. (1) being true implies that there is essentially no way to maintain first world living standards at the current level of population in first world countries, and that the population actually should go down in the short term (say over the next few decades or so) until it reaches some balanced level at which the birth rate would likely naturally return to ~2.1 This seems like it may actually be the case in certain countries like Japan and Korea where most of the population lives in high density cities and it is even more clear in cities like Hong Kong which has a population density of 7,060 people per square kilometer[0] and a birth rate of 0.7.[1] and Singapore. If (1) is true, high immigration would always be a net negative in the long term. If (2) is true immigration is acting as a band-aid for solving that problem, and once that problem is solved the specific argument you gave in favor of immigration would not be valid anymore. I think both (1) and (2) are true to different degrees in different countries. It is hard to argue that the issue with eg. Singapore's low birth rate has nothing to do with it having the third highest population density in the world.[2-3] Some European cities also have extremely high density cities such as Paris, but there is considerable variability, which leads me to the conclusion that the answer involves both (1) and (2).

>It sucks when someone is outcompeted by immigrant labor, but that should probably prompt some self reflection -- how can someone new to a country substitute into their job? And why weren't they doing more to find a job where that wasn't possible?

One reason might be that immigrants are willing to work for less pay. Additionally immigrant families are more likely to live in denser housing, for example in multi-generational or multi-family households, to reduce cost of living,[4-6] which is something non-immigrants generally do not want to do. These are just two among perhaps dozens of factors. The two above factors are related to my earlier point about there potentially being "no way to maintain first world living standards at the current level of population in first world countries."

[0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.POP.DNST?locations=H...

[1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location...

[2] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.POP.DNST?locations=S...

[3] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN?location...

[4] https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/OHE/Pages/HCI-Housing-Overc... - California. Data broken down by race rather than immigration status but should correlate with immigration status.

[5] https://data.census.gov/table/ACSST1Y2023.S0501 - US. See "1.01 or more occupants per room." Also compare average household size and average number of rooms.

[6] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12187-020-09743-7 - Finland


I think you are ignoring the core issue. The problem is not so much the population decreasing but it getting older. If the average age goes up (and therefore average productivity goes down significantly) that will likely outweigh all of the potential advantages you have discussed.

What is more, unless we change how democracy works (e.g. young people and those who have children (<18) get extra votes the older generations will keep voting for policies that only benefit them and make things even worse longterm.


I highly disagree, we don't know for sure what is causing people not to have kids.

However it's much more likely to be that it's due to the atomonization of society and as such people have a hard time raising kids.


When you say you disagree, is it with (1), (2) or both? If you meant you disagree with (1) but agree with (2), which seems to be the case based on your comment, why is there an inverse correlation between population density and TFR in developed countries?[0] It seems obvious that housing prices in a given city will in general increase and house size will decrease according to population density. If that is the case, it follows that potential parents will need to work longer before having children, which in turn decreases TFR. Look at apartment size in the US vs East Asia, for example.[1-3] It seems impossible for population density to increase while dwelling size remains constant, unless there is gap between the "legal" boundaries of a city in terms of what is counted toward population density and the "real" city which then would have to start out as smaller and grow larger at the outskirts.

[0] https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2002.1117 - "When explaining the level of fertility, population density comes out second in importance after female literacy, yet still well ahead of the traditionally studied factors: female labour force participation, income, urbanization and food security. This strong negative effect of population density on the level of fertility five years later is statistically significant in almost all years, both at the global level and among the sub-group of developing countries. " Note that this is after trying to account for other factors: "It is worthwhile to have a closer look at this apparently strong bivariate relationship between density and fertility because it might not really reflect a causal relationship, but rather could be due to some other developmental variables in the background, such as level of income or level of education that might simultaneously lead to lower fertility and make higher population densities possible. For this reason tables 3, 4 and 5 give sets of multiple regressions that study the relationship of population growth and fertility to population density while controlling some of the other social and economic variables measured." (Developing countries also show an inverse correlation, as mentioned in the quote)

[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/average-u-s-apartment... - "According to a new report, the average size of a new apartment in 2022 was less than 900 square feet."

[2] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1350102/usa-apartment-si... - The smallest city by apartment size is Seattle at 689 square feet and then Minneapolis at 720. Both do not have a very high densities compared to the largest US cities by density. Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan, SF and DC are next in that list, however, and they are all high density. I will also note that apartments do not automatically shrink when population density increases and there are a lot of historical factors that perhaps play a larger role for the size of apartments as well as the difference between the legal boundaries of a city and the boundaries of the city as relevant to this discussion. This said, landlords theoretically should opt to convert one large apartment to two smaller ones (or two large ones to three smaller ones) although I don't know how common that actually is given you need to install new plumbing, gain permits etc. to do that.

[3] https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Markets/Property/Living-lar... - "The average median per capita size of a Hong Kong dwelling is 172 sq. feet, smaller than Tokyo at 210 sq. feet, Singapore's 270 sq. feet and Shenzhen at 300 sq. feet."


> Cultural stability and assimilation rate are real processes, that can be influenced by various policies. [...] Yet immigration and assimilation create cultural friction with the then-dominant national culture, so that needs to be managed.

You're getting it backwards: What creates a lot more cultural friction is lack of assimilation. And Sweden officially abandoned assimilation as a goal under Olof Palme in the 1970s. That, and the fact that it was taboo to criticize this lack for many decades, is what has put Sweden where it is now.

Sure, public debate there looks ugly now, mainly because so many on the left still live in the past and basically accuse anyone to the right of Palme of being Genghis Khan's and Hitler's secret love child. But still, the actual government finally having officially abandoned at least some of the previously-mandatory virtue signalling is one of the few promising signs that Sweden may still have some way forward.

> Ultimately, I'd like to see more honest communication around "We're encouraging immigration to drive our economy" and "Here are the things that immigrants are having to deal with, as they adjust to living in our country, and what you can do to help them."

Unfortunately I'm still doubtful that they'll have the balls to tell it all thew way like it is, to wit: "The one thing that immigrants have to deal with in order to live in our country and not destroy it, is to assimilate; to become Swedish."

> It sucks when someone is outcompeted by immigrant labor, but that should probably prompt some self reflection -- how can someone new to a country substitute into their job?

And all the virtue signallers (which I can't quite tell whether you are one of) should probably reflect: Couldn't be because they're "competing" while living on social benefits and working on the black market, paying no taxes or social security fees, could it?




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: